


Denial

by ViridianPanther



Series: Thirty Days [13]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Destroy Ending, Epilogue, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 19:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViridianPanther/pseuds/ViridianPanther
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Normandy SR-2 is silent. After forty years of service, she is finally being decommissioned—and Jeff "Joker" Moreau, who has been with her since the very beginning, has a final goodbye to say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Denial

For what seems like the first time in her long life, the _Normandy SR-2_ is silent.

Lieutenant Moreau takes a deep breath as he gazes from the helmsman's seat one last time. They're docked at Earth, at Anderson Station. Appropriate, even though this ship (and her predecessor) had always been Shepard's, something even Anderson had admitted during the Alliance refit.

It is beautiful. He can see the glimmering reflection of the _SR-2_ in the portholes of the station, and—just downspin—her successor, _Normandy SR-3_ , to be launched in two weeks.

For now, after thirty-eight years of service, it's time for this bird to be mothballed. Jeff has been with her from beginning to end: from the moment Miranda Lawson showed up in the backwater bar on Omega, with a photograph of Shepard's resurrected body as a carrot and a pistol to Jeff's back as a stick.

Thirty-eight years. That makes the _Normandy_ just over half as old as Jeff himself.

As he hobbles aft to the elevator, he instinctively bends to pick up a dropped cufflink from a set of dress blues. Shepard's? Maybe. Even though you're supposed to call him Fleet Admiral these days, he's still Commander Shepard to everyone who knows him. Exactly that: Commander Shepard. Thinking about him, Jeff hasn't even heard Miranda call him by his first name, not even at their wedding.

Shepard's ship, even when Steve (or Commander Cortez, as he now was) took her over nineteen years ago. They had offered the command to Jeff, but he'd declined on principle: the _Normandy_ is Shepard's ship, with Shepard's team, and he could not possibly fill his shoes.

Cortez himself was never under any illusion, and it seemed like there was always some excuse to welcome Shepard back aboard, to ferry him to some distant summit or for suspiciously frequent inspections. His daughter has even been aboard a couple of times.

Shepard's ship, and the closest thing Joker has ever had to a long-term relationship.

Jeff moved his possessions into the old AI server room a few years after the activation of the Crucible. It was quiet—it still is—and the sound of the bluebox, idling with a low-pitched hum, has helped him to sleep.

Idling. Idling for every second since the activation of the Crucible, the destruction of the Reapers, and the end of the war.

He still remembers the sight of EDI, crimson arcs sparking across her termini, telling Jeff she loved him, lapsing into Spanish and French as her thought processes were slowly and quietly lobotomised by the echo of the Crucible's blast wave.

Jeff had been too busy bringing the _Normandy_ down cleanly on Carpathia to tell her that yes, he loved her too.

The impact still broke everything in his upper body. Ribs, right radius, both humeri, jaw, heart.

He still had Shepard, and there were days Jeff could tell that he hated himself for bringing death to EDI, and the geth, especially since it had only been a fortnight since they'd brokered an end to the centuries of attrition with the quarians. Part of Jeff wanted to blame Shepard, a part he's ignored.

He's not sure he would have done the same, but— _dammit._

He collects the last of his things into a small trolley, and opens the panel for the bluebox's breaker switch. He's never been able to bring himself to turn it off.

She's still in there. The bluebox stores something like an after-image of EDI, a ghost, and for nearly forty years Jeff has toyed with the idea that, somehow, it might be possible to bring her back. Somehow.

He taught himself Alliance Lisp over three years, spent the next twenty fiddling with backed-up copies of EDI's codebase, his stomach inevitably sinking a little when the compiled code would fail to execute any meaningful thought processes.

Twenty-three, thirty-eight years. EDI is— _was_ —the _Normandy_ , the most important person in Jeff's life. And he's not sure he can bring himself to—

Without thinking, he reaches out, clasps the handle of the breaker switch, and pulls it home.

It's tougher than it looks. For a split second he thinks about giving up, before it snaps to the 'off' position

and there's a 'click'

and the bluebox's gentle hum fades into a growl, and nothingness.

Jeff takes a deep breath, and stands, brushing his uniform clean and swallowing the lump in his throat.

"Goodbye, EDI. With all my love."


End file.
